


Miraculous Paris

by FrankenBean



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Fanwork Research & Reference Guides, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-25
Updated: 2019-04-25
Packaged: 2020-01-31 18:14:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18596767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrankenBean/pseuds/FrankenBean
Summary: This is literally just me putting my nerd brain to good use by creating pages of references and stuff that might be useful for people creating Miraculous Ladybug fanfictions. Because the show isn't very specific about place or time etc. I'm going to put speculation with references and the like in here. I am currently trying to write my first ML fanfiction and I keep hitting questions like: where do they live? why do they live there? what year is it? etc.Hopefully, it helps someone, if not it at least makes me feel productive even on days when zero words of fanfiction get written. please feel free to comment and get involved in speculating.





	1. Arrondissements???

Where the hecky deck are we?

So, First up, I am not French and have never been to France so I had to lay in some groundwork by finding out what neighborhoods exist in Paris. We know that Marinette goes to a very good school because a LOT of rich and famous kids seem to go there. Adrien is a high fashion model and the son of a famous designer, Chloe is the daughter of the mayor, Julika's mother owns and lives on a boat on the Sein, Marinette is considered the daughter of possibly some of the best bakers in Paris, the list goes on. So there was a LOT of information I needed to work with.

Firstly, the most central arrondissements 1-7 are considered the most expensive and hold most of the major landmarks we see in the show.

Next, Mayors of Paris work in Hôtel de Ville (City Hall) in the 4th arrondissement, we see this building in the episode "RogerCop" where Marinette takes helps save her classmates and ends up being class president and this building is distinctly different from Le Grand Paris Hotel where Chloe lives in the show.  
There is a real Le Grand Paris Hotel near the border of the 1st, 2nd and 9th arrondissements.

Next, we know that Marinette's parents often cater for events at the Hotel and that they are considered very high-quality bakers.I did a lot of trawling through google maps. The vast majority of the best-rated bakeries and patisseries in Paris seem to be in the North West quadrant of the city so 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 9th, 10th, and 11th arrondissements. I had a lot of fun looking at some of these, there is one called "Boulangerie Patisserie Legay Choc" all of the bread is penis shaped. At first, I thought it was a photo fluke and then I read the bakery name. But I think her parent's Bakery is more like "Pain Pain" near the border of the 9th and 18th arrondissements, just a guess really, some speculation. But then I remembered the "copy cat" episode where Marinette's house is LEGIT across the street Place des Vosges. AND DO YOU GUYS KNOW WHAT??? There is an adorable bakery RIGHT NEAR THERE IRL. Called "Boulangerie Patisserie Beaumarchais" in the 3rd arrondissement. Now the thing is, those buildings ARE HELLA TALL and the one with the Bakery does not have any balconies. BUT the building just next to it seems to have a rooftop balcony. And there are some cool looking schools like the Vocational school in the area.

Effectively on just these grounds, it kind of makes sense to set it around about the 3rd arrondissement. It's between where Chloe lives and where her father works, is in the hub of high-quality bakers in Paris and has proximity to a genuine place that is specifically named as being close to Marinette's bakery/house. 

Now Having said that, it also means that since Marinette is a planning type of person, patrols that kind of start near her house and tend to end at the Eifel tower, means covering the vast majority of the breadth of the main part of the city both there and back again. Which is smart.

My favorite bit in all of this really has been trying to figure out where Adrien lives/ what inspired the show to create the Agrest Mansion and fashion label. I found it fun to look at how Givenchey's logo looks an AWFUL lot like a butterfly, and how their headquarters does look similar to some elements of the design of the Agrest mansion. The headquarters is also really close to the Eifel tower which would be useful for all of the akumas that happen around that area. 

Anyway, this was just something fun and speculative that people might want for fanfics. This site has a cool map of the arrondissements and interesting info about them including a handy map:  
http://blog.lodgis.com/en/living-in-paris-how-to-choose-the-right-neighbourhood/


	2. Culture Shock

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Before I start this, apologies, this chapter's rant will be a LOT more technical than the previous one as it focuses on my degree specialization rather than how the previous chapter as a bit more light-hearted fun. I promise that if you are able to understand where I am coming from with some of these ideas and concepts, it may very well make your experience of watching the show a bit more interesting but it is going to start with some technical stuff.

While I may have not yet visited France, I studied media, culture and communications at university and was really very interested in the portrayal of culture and particularly youth sub-cultures in French media.

Vast amounts of French cinema from "La Haine" (1995) to "Blue is the Warmest Colour" (2013) and more, take in-depth looks at concepts like "what it means to be French" and how subcultures deviate from this concept of Frenchness, particularly youth subcultures. At the heart of a lot of these discussions, tends to be the argument about whether or not French culture is being diluted or tainted by American influence (Americanisation) for example, M. and Gott. M. (2009) "The Americanization of France" )(https://www.jstor.org/stable/25679767?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents) which questions the influence of American ideology on French culture, while others like Emmanuel, P (1958) "Is France Being Americanized?" (https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1958/06/is-france-being-americanized/376248/) who wrote almost 50 years prior to the former article suggests that post the second world war, older generations simply needed a scapegoat to lay blame for fear of changes that were inevitable since France's economy was fairly stable after the war in comparison to many of its neighbors. In effect, the article suggests that France's ideologies and cultures would change as they had the economic maneuverability to do so. 

In summary: a lot of people, particularly of the baby boomer generation, tend to think "the youth" of today has forgotten traditional values. If the previous chapter was a bit academic, that is all you really need to know.

But the question is kind of what "traditional" French culture looks like and how in the world it relates to ML, a children's TV show. Well, let's look at dating culture.  
https://thriveglobal.com/stories/8-surprising-differences-between-dating-in-france-and-america/

In French, there isn't really a word for "liking someone". Most of us have had that moment at a sleepover where someone has asked us who we liked and to avoid the awkwardness of worrying the friend would tell the crush, we have said something like: "oh, I like this person, as a friend." to which the inevitable response is a Cheshire cat grin and the words "yeah, but who do you like-like". 

Because in America and Britain we tend to be far more reserved in our affections, there is platonic feelings, mild attraction and then some more serious attraction and only then love. Look at any cheesy Hollywood love story where saying "I love you" is The Big Thing (TM). That's just not the same in many other cultures. French has "I love you" for crushes as much as serious partners. 

I'm mentioning this because I have seen sooo many bloggers and fanfic writers who are American and who seem a little bit weirded out by Marinette's seeming intensity of feeling towards Adrien and Chat Noir's intense feelings towards Ladybug. And to an extent, yes, it is pretty intense for 14/15-year-olds but we do need to factor in that it's a cartoon designed for kids. it hyperbolizes teenager behavior for the same reason animators make character's eyes bigger. It emphasizes meaning and expression. But there is also an element relating to culture. American and British viewers may not be comfortable or familiar with the seemingly binary system of platonic or straight up in love with feelings expressed by characters. It's why so many of us tend to age up the characters or adapt it to tone down on the words and actions. This is primarily because watching a cartoon is a much less intense experience than the fairly personal experience that reading provides. If you have ever read a fanfiction where you are just not feeling the chemistry, it might very well be due in part to word choice and culture difference between writer and reader. It can be jarring and make you feel second-hand embarrassment if it is too intense, or it might feel stagnant and slow.

Next, as the article suggests, asking out a stranger just isn't the done thing in traditional French dating, and it's this that kind of drives the drama of the love square debacle. It's also lead to some heated fandom arguments but just bear with me on this.

There are people in the fandom who view Chat Noir as a representative of Adrien's "true self" and Marinette as the "true self" of Ladybug. These people tend to be big Marichat shippers and sometimes big Ladrien haters. And the thing is, we could argue until the cows come home about the moral and emotional facets of love when secret identities are involved but primarily it will boil down to your personal perception of the characters. "True selves" believers tend to think about one face of the character being a front, a mask or deceit that does not accurately express who that person is as a whole (and that therefore, falling in love with this perfect front is wrong because it is a rejection of that person's flaws), while fans who reject the "true selves" narrative tend to be of the belief that a person's personality as a whole, is far more about a combination of who they are all of the time, a culmination of who a character is around their friends, family, in a crowd and when alone (this view is more about saying, they are always being themselves but they are being themselves within their specific context). If we think about the "Oblivio" episode, we see the characters behaving far more like a mixture of how they behave in and out of costume because they do not have the situational contextual cues of things like parental or societal expectation.

Now, I'm not going to take sides on this debate because I also know the reader/writer's personal experiences play a heavy role in how they will interpret the situation. People who have experienced emotional manipulation/abuse in a relationship of any kind may be viewing the show through the screen of their experiences, feelings of only being shown affection or affirmation when behaving a certain way or even to a lesser extent, if people have had someone like them until the person got to know them and realized that they were human with flaws and quirks and then left because relationships take work and communication. From that perspective, the characters might seem horribly vain to only be attracted by the "perfect images". But if you are someone who holds with this view I would just ask you to consider the alternate perspectives I'm going to be trying to explore here. 

Again, we are talking about a kids show so I want to emphasize that the writers seem to be trying to be a bit more black and white in their portrayals than a more nuanced piece for an older audience might be. But it is worth considering that we do see a very clear cut difference between Gabriel, who is absolutely an abusive parent and Marinette in their relationships to Adrien. 

Gabriel only has professionally perfect pictures of his wife and son, they are framed, boxed in, he gets angry when Adrien rebels in any way shape or form. Fanfic writers have taken this and kind of run with it in different directions, some have gone with a grief-stricken need to keep things orderly and contained as a method of preventing further damage to the family concept. It is a valid depression/grief /PTSD reaction to have a need to control things when a person isn't healthily and appropriately processing drastic changes in their lives. Other people have gone full out evil with it where he just always was evil and controlling and his wife tried to leave and maybe he almost killed her and is now trying to bring her back or tie her to him magically forever. We just don't know, and the ML universe tends to let us have this as a pretty big sandpit to play in. But very definitely, Gabriel knows that his son isn't perfect and demands that he should be at all times, this is abusive and is portrayed negatively.

Marinette, on the other hand, starts off believing Adrien to be a bully and then being blown away by his kindness and loneliness. She likes him and wants to get to know him but cannot get her words out around him in order to get to know him. The collage of pictures she has are not contained, they adapt as she gets to know him. If she had more pictures of him just in their friendship group then those would almost certainly take up precedence rather than the model photos. And this relationship is portrayed as positive because both Marinette and Adrien are shown wanting to get to know the person they are in love with but being stuck because of fears that come with identity reveals.

So now add on to that, concepts about French dating culture. This is where the fun begins.  
The previous article specifically mentions how it just isn't the done thing to date a stranger or by extension, to be in love with a stranger. Now think about Ladybug and Cat Noir. 

Adrien is a sheltered boy who is told constantly to be perfect and the first time he meets Ladybug, she falls out of the gosh darn sky in a sprawl of limbs and is a clumsy and terrified mess. And yet, she overcomes her fears to save the day. And she doesn't judge or mock him for not being perfect, for not having gotten all the information from his kwami. He is blown away by this force of nature that cares so deeply for people and who fights off her own doubts but who isn't afraid of being open with him about those doubts and insecurities. In comparison to his meeting with Marinette where she yells at him and then doesn't believe him until much later when he apologizes, it's kind of not surprising that his view of his relationship with Ladybug being better and more healthy for him than the start of his friendship with Marinette. Even so, he says of Ladybug that he would be in love with whoever the girl under the mask was, because he, unlike Paris, didn't straight up get the image of this perfect hero, he saw the girl who flailed and fell from the sky and failed the first mission but still got back up and tried again and who kept telling him his worth even when he messed up. If the gum misunderstanding never happened, and he and Marinette just got to develop a natural friendship without the stuttering lack of communication, then I'm sure Adrien would be in love with Marinette, but it's pretty difficult to love someone you barely speak to, especially if you come from a situation where you crave reaffirmation like Adrien does.

Now think about Marinette, her first meeting with Chat Noir was embarrassing for her and pretty stressful since she was pretty darn sure she didn't want to be Ladybug and that she wasn't cut out for it. She then meets someone who seems sure of himself by comparison with his jokes and wit. It's not that she is in anyway repulsed by him or anything, but it just doesn't really have any of the wow factor that created the attraction for Adrien. Then compare to how she meets Adrien. She is in a comfortable position with the same class of people she has known for ages, she is used to Chloe's meanness and so she blows a gasket with the gum thing and yet he goes out of his way to be kind to her, to apologize for the misunderstanding and to offer friendship. That's the wow factor for her. Adrien isn't being the perfect son in this moment, he's probably used to equating apologies with failure and shouting, he's just being quiet and nice. If she wasn't so wowed by Adrien here she would almost certainly have been wowed by his sincerity and kindness as Chat Noir somewhere down the line.

So then you have the hidden identities. Marinette has A LOT to protect at stake, she has her hopes and dreams to be a designer, her friends and family. Her life is filled with warmth and so even if she saw Chat's sincerity and kindness, there is the mental block of him being a stranger and the anonymity meaning safety and protection. By extension, Ladybug starts off as being Chat Noir's only source of warmth and comfort and acceptance and the anonymity blocks him from accessing more of that because he isn't able to talk to his friends at school, he isn't able to confide in Ladybug about personal issues etc. 

Once all of that has been taken in, we can actually look back at the concept of Americanisation.  
See, Adrien was raised sheltered from people his own age with strict monitoring so we can straight off the bat assume he is going to be more traditional in his ideology. And we see this very clearly in his pursuit of Ladybug. Watch any old traditional French romance cinema and the quote from the article about how when it comes to dating: “Men are active and aggressive while women are passive players. French men are expected to pursue vigorously while the women are expected to act coy and blush at flirtation,” If we think about this, that is the dynamic between him and Ladybug, he relentlessly flirts and she acts coy. To him, he probably feels like he is the star of an old French romance. But then keeps hitting up against the barrier of their identities, her withdrawal in favour of time as a civilian. I genuinely don't think it even occurred to him that she didn't in some way reciprocate his feelings until "Glaciator" where he had a big romantic gesture and she wasn't there. But similarly, I don't think Marinette thought he was serious in the least with his affections until Chat brought her to the rooftop and told her quietly and sincerely. British and American fans will probably agree that we tend to see Chat Noir's behavior as jester-like, farcical, over the top, like Marinette probably did, but then, she is bi-racial and a lot more modern/Americanised in her ideology.

We can also look at things from Marinette's perspective. She is undeterred by traditional gender roles, there is never a moment where she just goes "oh no, it isn't my place to tell him how I feel, I have to wait for him to notice me". Our girl will find a way or make one to get to know this boy and will even outright flirt with him and try to ask him out. But baby boy is oblivious because he DOES NOT EXPECT IT. That's just not something he ever expected to encounter having been raised with a traditional ideology so how could he possibly suspect that she is trying to sweep him off his feet. 

Going on from this, the concept of kissing is different between France and America, in France it's kind of about displays of intimacy so a kiss on the lips seals it, you are dating. Now think about "Dark Cupid". Our beautiful sunshine child Chat Noir finds out he was kissed by the love of his life to break a spell, he does not remember it but she did it. That must mean she loves him... right? Whereas for Ladybug, it's a little bit more "eh, I got the job done" which is why the film project kiss in "Horrificator" is all slow mo and a much bigger deal for Marinette, because she wants it to mean something.

Now we have a solid grounding in some cultural nuance understanding to look at the show with, now go and cry over "Oblivio" knowing that Adrien KNOWS that his lady willingly kissed him while under no duress and that he was kissing her back, that somehow when they had no memories of anything, they were very definitely sure they were in love with each other. And then think about how Marinette must be so utterly confused because to her mind HOW ON EARTH had she fallen for Chat enough to be kissing him like that when she didn't even know who she was? and imagine all the fun as in the next few episodes, or so, hopefully we will see Marinette noticing Chat a bit more because she knows herself enough to know that behind the jokes and over-expressiveness there must be this intensely sensitive and kind soul that she fell for in an instant when she didn't remember Adrien.

Phew, that was longer than I intended it to be :P


End file.
